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Is there unanimous consent (as described here and here) among the Fathers of the Church who wrote on the interpretation of Genesis that the order of events of creation actually occurred in the order Genesis describes them?

I know yom (Hebrew word for "day") used in Genesis must refer to a duration of time, be it 24 hours or some other duration (cf. the 1909 PBC decisions), but there is not unanimous consent among the Fathers on whether all the days are (or are not) one day.

For example, St. Augustine, as St. Thomas says, "differs from other expositors" and thinks that "all the days that are called seven, are one day represented in a sevenfold aspect." Augustine's view is not clear to me. Does he say the 6 days' events were all in one instant or just in one day? The former view seems to deny the 1909 PBC's statement that yom must be a duration of time (instants aren't durations). For example, I can say my awaking in the morning today and my going to sleep tonight are simultaneous events because they occur in the same day, but they are not instantaneous; thus, they are ordered chronologically.

Geremia
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  • I think if you mean all the church "fathers" prior to Augustine, then yes. If you're including the late "fathers", after the Roman Empire took over the church and made it political, then no. – david brainerd Aug 31 '14 at 01:14
  • @davidbrainerd: Yes, Augustine was different, believing that all the works of the 6 days were simultaneous, occurring in one day (temporally ordered or not in that day?), yet he still believed there was a succession or ordering "in the things produced" (could be called an "ordering of dependency"). I didn't know St. Augustine was the first to break with the pre-Augustine Fathers on this issue. – Geremia Aug 31 '14 at 02:12
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    Please define "the fathers of the church". – curiousdannii Aug 31 '14 at 04:38
  • @curiousdannii: At least Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, and Saint Jerome, but also the Doctors of the Church – Geremia Sep 01 '14 at 05:58
  • The Fathers of the Church –  Sep 01 '14 at 08:47
  • This question is impossible to answer, because most church "fathers" never told us what they believed about this. For instance, I'm pretty sure that Saint Peter never wrote about this, and he would have been considered the church father by many (specifically Catholics). There are those who argue that Saint Paul wrote about this, although there is a lot of disagreement even on that. – Flimzy Sep 01 '14 at 10:31
  • Augustine criticized the simplicity of the Genesis creation account. He insisted that is was a metaphor or was at least very seriously dumbed down so we could understand it. Here is an excellent post that talks about that: How old is old earth creationism? –  Sep 01 '14 at 16:00
  • I agree with Flimzy, that all or unanimous are scenarios we cannot answer with any certainty. –  Sep 01 '14 at 16:02
  • @Flimzy: I added the qualification "…who interpreted Genesis", namely, those who have an opinion on the the specific question I am asking. St. Peter and St. Paul didn't interpret Genesis, did they? – Geremia Sep 01 '14 at 17:31
  • @Geremia: I'm sure they did have opinions. – Flimzy Sep 01 '14 at 17:34
  • @Flimzy: Unless they wrote them down, how can we know what their opinions were? For the meaning of "unanimous consent of the Fathers," see the Council of Trent Session IV, the Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures, or the First Vatican Council's Dei Filius. – Geremia Sep 01 '14 at 17:35
  • @Geremia: We can't. That's one of the problems with this question. – Flimzy Sep 01 '14 at 17:36
  • FWIW, Augustine didn't know Hebrew. – Jas 3.1 Sep 05 '14 at 00:04
  • http://www.usccb.org/bible/hebrews/11/ there's certainly more to it when it comes to the church fathers (who every schoolgirl knows are the Catholic Writers in the first 4 centuries ending with St Augustine), but Hebrews 11, written by a Church Father (or Mother), says we should use the ancients as an example of Faith, it certainly doesn't consider them myths. – Peter Turner Oct 06 '14 at 02:59

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cf. The Church Fathers list on the New Advent.

From Creation and Genesis | Catholic Answers it states:

The following quotations from the Fathers show how widely divergent early Christian views were.

Yet there is no evidence from the quotations that they disagreed on the order of events as described in Genesis actually occurred in the order Genesis describes them.

From Concerning the Historical Character of the First Three Chapters of Genesis | The Replies of the Pontifical Biblical Commission On questions of Sacred Scripture | Translated by E. F. Sutcliffe, S.J., it appears that the Church has affirmed the historicity of the First Three Chapters of Genesis and therefore it is not permitted to a good son [or daughter] of the Church to disagree that order of events as described in Genesis actually occurred in the order Genesis describes them.

What the Pontifical Biblical Commission said as regards the six days

VIII : In the designation and distinction of the six days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis may the word Yom (day) be taken either in the literal sense for the natural day or in an applied sense for a certain space of time, and may this question be the subject of free discussion among exegetes?
Answer: In the affirmative.

The Catholics Answers link above and the OP both state Church Fathers held divergent views and Catholics are at liberty to believe that creation took a few days or a much longer period, according to how they see the evidence, and subject to any future judgment of the Church (Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis 36–37).